The Soul in Pieces and its Quest for the Peace of Christ

Open Access star Unrestricted online access

Confessions is the tale of the journey to the patria pacis from out of the ashes of humanity's restless, sinful anxiety. Augustine's quest for inner peace is wrapped within this journey home, and it is a quest that has a trinitarian and an ecclesiological structure. Interior peace is only achieved through our participation in Christ, which itself is structured by our inclusion within Christ's body (the Church) through the power of the Spirit. We find this peace when we find our rest, that is, when we find our proper place. Love dictates our place and within the body of Christ we find the proper (moral) love that directs our praise toward God. This love is also the presence of the Spirit within the soul-this love is the Spirit-and so interior peace is not only a condition of the soul but also its deification. This points to the underlying reality of the soul's interior nature, whose existence and identity is grounded in its imaging of God. We find our peace in uniting with God because our proper place-the place wherein we find rest-is as images of the divine.

Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ cc https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

English